I've Been Dreaming of a White Christmas...and I Finally Got It!

But before we get to that....it was a pretty eventful Christmas for little Mackenzie this year. Here's all the things that I wish I could tell you about in person.

1. After ignoring the urge to accept Southwest's offer to wait for a later flight and get a $200 voucher for it after they had overbooked my Saturday night flight home for the holidays, I ended up on a diverted flight to Spokane, WA. This was my first real comprehension of why some people are often frustrated by large amounts of frozen precipitation affectionately known as "snow." Never having understood it before, after debarking my plane at 10 pm in the small, foodless, NOT international airport of Spokane, with this look on my face:

we were informed that our hopes of being able to continue on to Seattle were crushed, as our flight had been cancelled. "Just go get your baggage," they said, "and someone will be there to help you."

No one was there. After discovering that every hotel in town was booked, that SW had removed itself of all responsibility to provide us with a paid hotel or a new flight to Seattle, that because it was the holidays there were no open seats to be purchased on any flights for at least 2 days, that Dad couldn't follow up on his sweet offer to drive the 5 hours and pick me up because the pass was closed, and that the Seattle and Portland airports were all shut down due to the weather, little Miss Mackenzie was stranded in some podunk airport with minimal late-night food options. After realizing that my only option was to sleep here,

right in front of the ticketing counter to be first in line in the morning to get on the stand-by list, I spent the entire night raiding my suitcase for warm clothes - turns out the ticketing counter is generally right in front of those automatic doors that open and close all night long...and Spokane had record low temps that night. Of course! SW did us the courtesy of offering a large box of those tissue paper navy blankets (and after seeing a large box labeled "navy blankets" and discovering that four of them together have absolutely no warming capability whatsoever, I made some drowsy, half-asleep comment to the guy next to me about how I was never going to join the Navy. He replied that he was pretty sure they meant navy blue.)

Awesome. So after bedding down and spending a long, frozen, sleepless night while the guy next to me played "The Family Guy" on his laptop, I made it onto the top of the standby list the next morning. Hooray! My fears of spending 2-3 days in Spokane were somewhat placated.

Several hours later, while hundreds of people from diverted/cancelled flights milled around and waited in line to get added onto an interminably long standby list, little Mackenzie, because of her heroic efforts in suffering through a long, cold night in front of the ticketing counter, made it onto a real, live airplane that actually had a shot at making it out of the airport!!!! And funny thing is, the machine printing my boarding pass broke, so they had to pre-board me with the babies. I called Dad while I was sitting on a near-empty plane, and he told me to hide under my seat before they could change their minds.

The good thing that came out of it all was the camaraderie built with absolute strangers who naturally become friends after sleeping on a dirty floor together. Me and a guy trying to pick up his son in Seattle even shared a pizza. It was a beautiful thing.

And I finally made it home! Without my suitcase. It arrived in Seattle 2 days later - two days of wearing Mom's clothes, not having to do my hair or make-up for two days, having one emotional breakdown (read: sobbing and hyperventilating) at the airport after way too many hours without a good nights' sleep combined with being cold for 24 hours combined with waiting for Burke's flight to get in and then sitting for an hour and a half on the tarmac, combined with WAY too much time spent in airports, knowing I was going to have to come back again and again to see if my bag managed to show up. Oh, and after a yelling match between me and the Southwest baggage claim people. I later apologized, once I had my bag in hand, which one morning, decided to actually make it onto a flight from Spokane and show up on the carousel. IT WAS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!!!

2. Sledding. Our house is on top of a big hill. Not since she was little has it snowed enough for Mackenzie to go sledding on the beloved hill. Until Christmas 2008!! After donning Dad's SWEET one-piece ski suit,
and classic Moon Boots (Note: these are the most effective snow boots ever manufactured. Not once did I slip on the snow or ice. Everyone else was jealous. I think they should make a comeback in day-glo colors. You won't have to sacrifice style for utility with these babies.),and after a fruitless search for the old green and orange sleds, Dad rigged up some old surgical sacks used for something sterile, and we went sledding! I won't even go into how great it felt to go sledding - nostalgia, childlike appreciation for snow and all things winter, etc. I loved it. And so did Dad, who I'm pretty sure was just as ecstatic about sledding as I was. He's cute. :)

3. Pike Place Market and breakfast in Seattle with Mom, Mike, Cam, Burke, Katie, Shelby, and Aaron (and The Tall Boys).

4. Christmas Eve with Mom, Mike, and the Jones'

5. and Christmas Day with Dad and Rusty. Unfortunately, due to a temporary confusion of camera identity, there are no pictures of Christmas with Dad. But it snowed and looked pretty much like this:

Beauuuuuteeeeeeful.

6. New Years in North Carolina with Scott, Alexis, and the boys!

After a dinner at the "fire restaurant" and an early celebration at 7 pm for the boys, Scott and I ran in a 3.5 mile race that started at midnight at Tanglewood Park! This was amusing because Mackenzie, due to an unfortunate incident involving her foot and a car, had not participated in any form of exercise for several months. In fact, to see if her foot could handle a warm-up run, she ran a mile and it made her sore. How embarrassing. But we were determined to do it, so we bundled up (it was 27 degrees outside) drove to Tanglewood Park, and ran a little race under a bunch of Christmas lights. In return for our efforts, we received a free shirt, large amounts of Coke and junk food to eat after the race (?????), something fun to do on New Years, and an excuse for Mackenzie to consume large amounts of ibuprofen and Celebrex. Both come highly recommended.

But one of the best parts about New Years in North Carolina was the chance to take more pics of my cuter-than-ever nephews:

So, the moral of the story is, once you get out of Spokane and actually have your suitcase, the holidays are still better than ever.